thought dumping without looking at my sources here BUT

i just dont get it right like the line in shoushitsu so VERY directly says "as long as you're a person the old world's legacy will continue in the toroidal direction" mea!ning! (based off other context in both shoushitsu & other songs like maximizer) so long as the characters continue to follow their paths of their own will & desire & don't think of it as only something they need to do or as the only relevant trait about themselves, then they still have their selves/egos and still are full people. and in that case that they're full people they're guaranteed to follow the path of the world into its next iteration, in other words, they get to keep living, or if u want to stick with the terms in shoushitsu they're "reborn" in the new world so to speak.

this isnt even speculation, this is shown to us in both the text in shoushitsu (the text thats like "she slowly closed her eyes, and i gently opened mine. a certain world had disappeared") and also the text in canon (about how she comes to in front of a fountain after it rained, implying the start of a new loop/world)

and even up to the end of oumen mokushiroku it's clearly tenshi still holds her own values, still has her wants & seems to be aware of herself. i dont know if the "'not me not me' those words didnt reach anyone" is referring to tenshi or apoptosis speaking, seeing as its implied apoptosis was the first to be chosen as a sacrifice until she pinned it on someone else (who happened to end up as tenshi). tenshi's hyper aware of time almost like how the laboratory character is, that hyper awareness that can only come with knowing an indisputable end is coming. she knows what's happening & can't find a way out of it. but that doesn't make sense to me. if she's still herself, if she stepped in to take apoptosis' place, that's her own judgement, protecting the other is her own goal in that case. i guess it's possible to only fall on tenshi if she's the one least likely to protest, but even of the event of being forced to be a sacrifice, even if she has to "accept" this fate, that's not real acceptance, that's not really throwing herself away in the sense that this series requires. i guess it can be stretched that far if needed since it seems like the only real option here, that she ended up giving up her own goals to fulfill a role the others demanded, thus became a "thing" rather than a "person" at the last minute. but even then that doesnt add up. shes crying over this. shes ACTUALLY crying over it. despite ALL the stress & psychological torment going on in the entire series, she's the ONLY one shown crying over it (yes several others are mentioned to cry. it only makes sense. they arent SHOWN that way however) & no one who's truly accepted a role, even this dire of a role, would really cry over it right? it's hard for her. her smile looks like it could break any second.

yet even for being an early song in the series, if she wasn't meant to be a "person" there's enough in the song to tie it to the series without it having the motif. the ou itself directly ties it to aru sekai shoushitsu & that's how a lot of people realize its related. the motif isnt really necessary to show its a series song. look at all the more recent songs that dont have it specifically to show the characters dead. so why is she singing hers. it feels like saying she's dying as herself truly, but then she should just wake up again like everyone else if that was the case. what makes it a sacrifice really and why is it different from how everyone else is dying?? the only other thing i can think of is that, if she's singing it, it's like a last wish of sorts. the sort of thing only meant for emotional impact. it's true that it's still the only song besides shoushitsu that has the motif sung instead of added to the instrumentals. i can't help but feel that has a meaning to it. maybe it is to say she's giving it up. i just don't know it doesn't make sense to me given the other details i feel like she should still get to live.

i mean both kyuuyaku and kannagi sing out the rute furute wo a line. touhikou doesn't but those two do. it doesnt seem to bind them to each other any more than it does touhikou.

so i just really don't know how i'm supposed to take the end of oumen. everything else, everything else seems to say she's dead. she's not coming back. the way she says she wishes they could meet again, the way she says everything goes dark. the way how in unplanned apoptosis, the song tied the closest to oumen, she falls apart even worse after the sacrifice is brought up. how in kanon shes deeply regretful over the fact a sacrifice ever occurred. everything else is saying tenshi's dead she's not coming back. except the fact the main motif to say a character lives is in the song. and the thing is, oumen and apoptosis seem to be all magu wants to give us regarding that particular incident. we might not get any more info on what happened there beyond those two. sure kanon's related too, but not as deeply, not enough to give any more clarity to this one situation. sure we get new unexpected info every new song, but coming back to these two feels so unlikely. it's like everything's here already, yet its still not enough to know everything.